Commentary
I’m old and don’t like change. I’ve balked, moaned and resented the roundabout going in right up the road. But I’m a sentimental fool. I’m nostalgic for the blinker light, the old blinker light, with red on two sides. The one I used to speed through on the way back from parties.
Why be nostalgic for long gone places?
Editor’s note: The following is a talk James Athearn gave on Sunday at the West Tisbury Congregational Church as part of the church’s farm-to-faith initiative. Mr. Athearn is the owner of Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown. The Hebrew Center is partnering with the church on this program and will be holding a farm-to-faith shabbat service tonight, April 26, and a panel discussion afterwards entitled The Art and Faith of Farming.
“You know, I used to live there,” I told my in-laws after they mentioned hoping to visit Martha’s Vineyard during a New England vacation.
So many memories washed over me. Stopping to swim in the sound on the way home from work each August day. The ferries that without fail made me queasy. Running the trail at Fulling Mill Brook. That lady Virginia who sang Material Girl each week at Season’s karaoke night. A bay scallop melting in my mouth.
Martha’s Vineyard leads the State in unhealthy alcohol consumption (Vineyard Gazette, March 28, 2013) but Martha’s Vineyard is also a leader in helping people gain long term recovery through its sober living facilities. The Vineyard House plan to build a new and expanded sober house campus is a very strong statement that the entire community will come together to support individuals who are ready to recapture their lives.
I have always been a talker. My parents said even when I was little when they would come home late from an evening out they would rush into my room outraged that I was still awake . . . only to find me sitting up in bed talking in my sleep. To no one.
I come from a family of talkers. We talk over each other thinking the louder we yell the bigger the possibility that someone will listen. But since there are no listeners in this crowd no one really hears anything.
Perhaps perversely, now that spring is here and the daffodils and forsythia are out and dandelions are starting to gleam along roadsides, I’m feeling nostalgic about snow. I missed most of this past winter’s Island snow, but on a recent trip I found it frosting the evergreen forests in Germany and Poland, and it led to a most serendipitous encounter.